Everywhere She Turns Read Free

overrode emotion.
    Patient had no other visible injuries.
    Not breathing.
    Oh, hell
.
    No pulse.
    Adrenaline detonated in CJ’s veins, sharpening her senses. “Help me get him out of here!”
    The older brother stuck his upper body into the car. “What?”
    “You and your friend,” CJ commanded, “help me get him out of the car and on the ground. Hurry!”
    The two men scrambled into unsteady action. CJ cradled the boy’s head and neck as the brother and his friend lifted him out of the backseat.
    “Put him down over there.” She jerked her head toward the front of the taxi. The headlights would help her see what she was doing. Streetlights weren’t enough.
    “You! Taxi guy!” CJ shouted at the man still on his cell phone. He stopped explaining their circumstances and stared at her in question. “Tell them I need an ALS unit. We have full trauma arrest.” She turned back to the boy. The battle was very nearly over. “Tell them to hurry!”
    “You can help him, right?” The older brother dropped to his knees on the pavement next to her.
    “We have to control the bleeding.” CJ needed this guy focused on his little brother, not distracting her.
    “You know what this means?” his friend yelled as he paced back and forth in the middle of the street. “The cops are coming. We gotta get outta here.”
    “Shut up!” the brother screamed.
    “Give me your hand.” CJ reached out to him. His eyes were wild with fear and whatever had him buzzed. His hand shook as she gripped his wrist and covered the wound with his palm. “Keep pressure there. It slows the bleeding.”
    Not that this kid had much left to leak.
    CJ started chest compressions.
    “They’ll take us to fucking jail,” the friend railed. “I ain’t going to jail. This is your fault, not mine!”
    “I said,” the brother warned, “shut the fuck up.”
    CJ tuned out the heated exchange. Focused on keeping theboy’s heart pumping. She had no idea how long he’d been in full arrest, but he didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving if—
    Blood seeped from beneath the kid’s left shoulder, spreading ominously over the pavement.
    Shit
.
    She stopped the compressions.
    “What’re you doing?” the brother demanded. “Keep . . .” He motioned with his free hand. “Doing whatever. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”
    CJ didn’t answer. She carefully rolled her patient onto his right side. Her breath fisted in her throat, refused to fill her lungs.
    Exit wound: left scapula. Major blood vessels, the heart . . . all lay smack in the middle of the path the bullet had taken. The puddle of blood on the pavement indicated that every chest compression she’d executed had sent more of what little blood remained in his slim body out that exit wound.
    “Do something!” the brother wailed.
    Where the hell was that ambulance? “Did you tell them to hurry?” CJ shouted to the taxi driver.
    He nodded frantically. “They’re coming! They’re coming!”
    “Help him, goddammit!” the brother shouted in her face.
    CJ flinched but kept her focus on the kid. She lowered him onto his back. “We need pressure on that wound!”
    The brother obeyed the order and she resumed chest compressions. The kid would likely die anyway, but he would damned sure die if she didn’t try.
    Just hang in there, kid
.
    “Don’t you get it?” the brother’s paranoid friend yelled. “The kid’s dead. Nobody loses that much blood and lives. She’s only doing that”—he waved wildly at CJ with both hands—“to keep you from freaking out. The kid’s fucking dead, man.”
    Big brother shot to his feet. “If you don’t shut—”
    “Gun!” the taxi driver screamed. “He’s got a gun!”
    Don’t listen
.
Don’t look
.
Focus
.
    The distant shrill of sirens accompanied the screaming between the three men.
    “Tell him,” the friend shrieked at CJ, “that you can’t save the kid!”
    “Is that true?”
    She ignored the brother’s demand.